On August 19,
1862, Horace Greeley, the influential editor of the New York Tribune, published
an open letter ("The Prayer of Twenty Millions") calling on Lincoln to free the
slaves as a way of weakening the Confederacy. In response to Greeley's
editorial, Lincoln stated that his main purpose was to preserve the Union, and,
to achieve that goal, he was prepared to free none, some, or all of the slaves,
depending on the circumstances. Lincoln's letter prepared the public to
accept the Emancipation Proclamation, which he still had not issued. Below
is Greeley's original article as published and directly following that is
Lincoln's reply.

DEAR SIR: I do not intrude to tell you--for you must know
already--that a great proportion of those who triumphed in you
election, and of all who desire the unqualified suppression of
the Rebellion now desolating our country, are sorely disappointed
and deeply pained by the policy you seem to be pursuing with
regard to the slaves of the Rebels. I write only to set
succinctly and unmistakably before you what we require, what we
think we have a right to expect, and of what we complain.
I. We require of you, as the first servant of the Republic,
charged especially and preeminently with this duty, that you
EXECUTE THE LAWS. Most emphatically do we demand that such laws
as have been recently enacted, which therefore may fairly be
presumed to embody the present will and to be dictated by the
present needs of the Republic, and which, after due consideration
have received your personal sanction, shall by you be carried
into full effect, and that you publicly and decisively instruct
your subordinates that such laws exist, that they are binding on
all functionaries and citizens, and that they are to be obeyed to
the letter.
II. We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the
discharge of your official and imperative duty with regard to the
emancipating provisions of the new Confiscation Act. Those
provisions were designed to fight Slavery with Liberty. They
prescribe that men loyal to the Union, and willing to shed their
blood in her behalf, shall no longer be held, with the Nations
consent, in bondage to persistent, malignant traitors, who for
twenty years have been plotting and for sixteen months have been
fighting to divide and destroy our country. Why these traitors
should be treated with tenderness by you, to the prejudice of the
dearest rights of loyal men, We cannot conceive.
III. We think you are unduly influenced by the counsels, the
representations, the menaces, of certain fossil politicians
hailing from the Border Slave States. Knowing well that the
heartily, unconditionally loyal portion of the White citizens of
those States do not expect nor desire chat Slavery shall be
upheld to the prejudice of the Union--(for the truth of which we
appeal not only to every Republican residing in those States, but
to such eminent loyalists as H. Winter Davis, Parson Brownlow,
the Union Central Committee of Baltimore, and to The Nashville
Union)--we ask you to consider that Slavery is everywhere the
inciting cause and sustaining base of treason: the most
slaveholding sections of Maryland and Delaware being this day,
though under the Union flag, in full sympathy with the Rebellion,
while the Free-Labor portions of Tennessee and of Texas, though
writhing under the bloody heel of Treason, are unconquerably
loyal to the Union. So emphatically is this the case, that a most
intelligent Union banker of Baltimore recently avowed his
confident belief that a majority of the present Legislature of
Maryland, though elected as and still professing to be Unionists,
are at heart desirous of the triumph of the Jeff. Davis
conspiracy; and when asked how they could be won back to loyalty,
replied "only by the complete Abolition of Slavery." It seems to
us the most obvious truth, that whatever strengthens or fortifies
Slavery in the Border States strengthens also Treason, and drives
home the wedge intended to divide the Union. Had you from the
first refused to recognize in those States, as here, any other
than unconditional loyalty--that which stands for the Union,
whatever may become of Slavery, those States would have been, and
would be, far more helpful and less troublesome to the defenders
of the Union than they have been, or now are.
IV. We think timid counsels in such a crisis calculated to prove
perilous, and probably disastrous. It is the duty of a Government
so wantonly, wickedly assailed by Rebellion as ours has been to
oppose force to force in a defiant, dauntless spirit. It cannot
afford to temporize with traitors nor with semi-traitors. It
must not bribe them to behave themselves, nor make cheat fair
promises in the hope of disarming their causeless hostility.
Representing a brave and high-spirited people, it can afford to
forfeit anything else better than its own self-respect, or their
admiring confidence. For our Government even to seek, after war
has been made on it, to dispel the affected apprehensions of
armed traitors that their cherished privileges may be assailed by
it, is to invite insult and encourage hopes of its own downfall.
The rush to arms of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, is the true answer
at once to the Rebel raids of John Morgan and the traitorous
sophistries of Beriah Magoffin.
V. We complain that the Union cause has suffered, and is now
suffering immensely, from mistaken deference to Rebel Slavery.
Had you, Sir, in your Inaugural Address, unmistakably given
notice that, in case the Rebellion already commenced were
persisted in, and your efforts to preserve the Union and enforce
the laws should be resisted by armed force, you would recognize
no loyal person as rightfully held in Slavery by a traitor, we
believe the Rebellion would therein have received a staggering if
not fatal blow. At that moment, according to the returns of the
most recent elections, the Unionists were a large majority of the
voters of the Slave States. But they were composed in good part
of the aged, the feeble, the wealthy, the timid--the young, the
reckless, the aspiring, the adventurous, had already been largely
lured by the gamblers and negro-traders, the politicians by trade
and the conspirators by instinct, into the toils of Treason. Had
you then proclaimed that Rebellion would strike the shackles from
the slaves of every traitor, the wealthy and the cautious would
have been supplied with a powerful inducement to remain loyal. As
it was, every coward in the South soon became a traitor from
fear; for Loyalty was perilous, while Treason seemed
comparatively safe. Hence the boasted unanimity of the South--a
unanimity based on Rebel terrorism and the fact that immunity and
safety were found on that side, danger and probable death on
ours. The Rebels from the first have been eager to confiscate,
imprison, scourge and kill: we have fought wolves with the
devices of sheep. The result is just what might have been
expected. Tens of thousands are fighting in the Rebel ranks to-day whose, original bias and natural leanings would have led them
into ours.
VI. We complain that the Confiscation Act which you approved is
habitually disregarded by your Generals, and that no word of
rebuke for them from you has yet reached the public ear.
Fremont's Proclamation and Hunter's Order favoring Emancipation
were promptly annulled by you; while Halleck's No. 3, forbidding
fugitives from Slavery to Rebels to come within his lines-- an
order as unmilitary as inhuman, and which received the hearty
approbation of every traitor in America-- with scores of like
tendency, have never provoked even your own remonstrance. We
complain that the officers of your Armies have habitually
repelled rather than invited approach of slaves who would have
gladly taken the risks of escaping from their Rebel masters to
our camps, bringing intelligence often of inestimable value to
the Union cause. We complain that those who have thus escaped to
us, avowing a willingness to do for us whatever might be
required, have been brutally and madly repulsed, and often
surrendered to be scourged, maimed and tortured by the ruffian
traitors, who pretend to own them. We complain that a large
proportion of our regular Army Officers, with many of the
Volunteers, evince far more solicitude to uphold Slavery than to
put down the Rebellion. And finally, we complain that you, Mr.
President, elected as a Republican, knowing well what an
abomination Slavery is, and how emphatically it is the core and
essence of this atrocious Rebellion, seem never to interfere with
these atrocities, and never give a direction to your Military
subordinates, which does not appear to have been conceived in the
interest of Slavery rather than of Freedom.
VII. Let me call your attention to the recent tragedy in New
Orleans, whereof the facts are obtained entirely through Pro-Slavery channels. A considerable body of resolute, able-bodied
men, held in Slavery by two Rebel sugar-planters in defiance of
the Confiscation Act which you have approved, left plantations
thirty miles distant and made their way to the great mart of the
South-West, which they knew to be the indisputed possession of
the Union forces. They made their way safely and quietly through
thirty miles of Rebel territory, expecting to find freedom under
the protection of our flag. Whether they had or had not heard of
the passage of the Confiscation Act, they reasoned logically that
we could not kill them for deserting the service of their
lifelong oppressors, who had through treason become our
implacable enemies. They came to us for liberty and protection,
for which they were willing render their best service: they met
with hostility, captivity, and murder. The barking of the base
curs of Slavery in this quarter deceives no one--not even
themselves. They say, indeed, that the negroes had no right to
appear in New Orleans armed (with their implements of daily labor
in the cane-field); but no one doubts that they would gladly have
laid these down if assured that they should be free. They were
set upon and maimed, captured and killed, because they sought the
benefit of that act of Congress which they may not specifically
have heard of, but which was none the less the law of the land
which they had a clear right to the benefit of--which it was
somebody's duty to publish far and wide, in order that so many as
possible should be impelled to desist from serving Rebels and the
Rebellion and come over to the side of the Union, They sought
their liberty in strict accordance with the law of the land--they
were butchered or re-enslaved for so doing by the help of Union
soldiers enlisted to fight against slaveholding Treason. It was
somebody's fault that they were so murdered--if others shall
hereafter stuffer in like manner, in default of explicit and
public directions to your generals that they are to recognize and
obey the Confiscation Act, the world will lay the blame on you.
Whether you will choose to hear it through future History and 'at
the bar of God, I will not judge. I can only hope.
VIII. On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is
not one disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the
Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the
Rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause are
preposterous and futile--that the Rebellion, if crushed out
tomorrow, would be renewed within a year if Slavery were left in
full vigor--that Army officers who remain to this day devoted to
Slavery can at best be but half-way loyal to the Union--and that
every hour of deference to Slavery is an hour of added and
deepened peril to the Union, I appeal to the testimony of your
Ambassadors in Europe. It is freely at your service, not at mine.
Ask them to tell you candidly whether the seeming subserviency of
your policy to the slaveholding, slavery-upholding interest, is
not the perplexity, the despair of statesmen of all parties, and
be admonished by the general answer.
IX. I close as I began with the statement that what an immense
majority of the Loyal Millions of your countrymen require of you
is a frank, declared, unqualified, ungrudging execution of the
laws of the land, more especially of the Confiscation Act. That
Act gives freedom to the slaves of Rebels coming within our
lines, or whom those lines may at any time inclose--we ask you to
render it due obedience by publicly requiring all your
subordinates to recognize and obey it. The rebels are everywhere
using the late anti-negro riots in the North, as they have long
used your officers' treatment of negroes in the South, to
convince the slaves that they have nothing to hope from a Union
success-that we mean in that case to sell them into a bitter
bondage to defray the cost of war. Let them impress this as a
truth on the great mass of their ignorant and credulous bondsmen,
and the Union will never be restored-never. We cannot conquer
Ten Millions of People united in solid phalanx against us,
powerfully aided by the Northern sympathizers and European
allies. We must have scouts, guides, spies, cooks, teamsters,
diggers and choppers from the Blacks of the South, whether we
allow them to fight for us or not, or we shall be baffled and
repelled. As one of the millions who would gladly have avoided
this struggle at any sacrifice but that Principle and Honor, but
who now feel that the triumph of the Union is dispensable not
only to the existence of our country to the well being of
mankind, I entreat you to render a hearty and unequivocal
obedience to the law of the land.

Yours,
Horace Greeley
New York, August 19, 1862

Source: "Lincoln and Greeley"
by Harlan Horner

Lincoln's Reply to Greeley
(August 22, 1862)

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862

Hon. Horace Greeley:

Dear Sir. I have just read yours of the 19th addressed to myself
through the New York Tribune. If there be in it any statements,
or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do
not, now and here, controvert them. If there be perceptable in
it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to
an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have
not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way
under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be
restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If
there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at
the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there
be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the
same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My
paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is
not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the
Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could
save it by freeing all slaves I would do it; and if I could save
it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I
believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear
because I don't believe it would help to save the Union. I shall
do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause,
and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help
the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be error;
and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be
true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of
Official duty: and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed
personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.